Katrina Kehoe

My name is Katrina Kehoe. I am a dedicated mother of two gorgeous children, William (4 years old) and Jasmine (2 years old). I’ve been home full time with the kids since starting our family in November 2008.

Kehoe’s Kitchen started early in 2013 as a Facebook (FB) page enabling me to share ideas and photos of food inspired by the Gut and Psychology Syndrome(GAPS) diet with the local GAPS community. In starting Kehoe’s Kitchen I’ve been able to combine some of my greatest passions- photography, cooking and helping others. I’ve always been a hobby photographer and some of my work has won awards in the past. On top of that, I’ve always been a keen and experimental cook.

Before Kehoe’s Kitchen, I would post photos on my personal FB page all the time of my kids and the occasional meal I’d created. Once we turned grain, dairy, preservative and soy free, I was creating what I considered were loads more photo worthy meals and I started to post more food pics to my personal FB timeline. It wasn’t long before I started to get comments from standard dieters about the perceived lack of flavour, cardboard etc. etc. The lack of understanding that seemed so prevalent knocked the wind out of my sails for a while and I stopped posting about food on Facebook. I did however keep taking photos and kept writing my own personal cookbook with the hope of one day being able to get it published so I could help families in a similar situation to ours. I knew there was a need for this and people would be interested. So I joined some FB closed nutrition groups and shared my photos with them. The response was amazing, and I soon found myself inspired once more. In turn I created the Kehoe’s Kitchen Facebook page a few days later as my personal cooking blog space and only shared it with the closed nutrition groups and my parents. Finally I had the motivation I needed to get serious about sharing my ideas to help others.

To enable me to do that the last few months have had me busy building this website, writing my first cookbook, organising a local organic co-operative and selling whole food cooking equipment and ingredients. I’ve been doing all this while the entire family undertook the GAPS Intro diet for the first time. I’ve been told that I’m crazy for doing this but I’m so passionate about helping other people and I love the challenge. In case you haven’t guessed I’m a textbook Capricorn.

I couldn’t do it all without the love and support of my fabulous husband and kids. My Husband is very supportive and helps out with absolutely everything and even lets me sleep in a little while he cooks the kids breakfast before heading to work if I’ve been up all night on the computer (most nights lately). The kids eat just about everything I make and love helping me out in the kitchen and dad in the food Garden. My hubby is the Green thumb of the family and is producing loads of awesome organic produce for us.

Growing up, My parents owned cafes and restaurants so I’ve basically grown up in a commercial kitchen. I have always had a passion for cooking and most of all eating. I started officially cooking for my parents’ restaurants and cafes when I was 11 years old and continued working for them through to my last year of university. At the age of 21 I graduated with honours in Civil Engineering and 11 years (casual) cooking experience.

I then left the commercial kitchen and went on to work as a consulting structural engineer in Brisbane but never stopped learning in the kitchen. By day I’d be designing buildings and bossing builders around and in my spare time I would read cookbooks, source beautiful ingredients and cook up a storm. As I said earlier, everyone has always joked that my husband married me for my cooking. I’ve always been a foodie, cooking for people to express myself creatively- it’s kind of hard not to with my upbringing, I think it’s in my blood.

My high school friends can testify about the homemade lasagnas, spaghetti bolognaise and pizzas I use to make for their families when I slept over. Before we started a family my hubby and I spent many Friday nights hanging out at the BYO Chinese and Vietnamese restaurants in Fortitude Valley and I’d always be recreating the Asian feasts at home. Prior to cooking for nourishment, Asian, Indian and Italian were my biggest influences.

Oh and you’re not going to believe it but I didn’t bake (apart from pizza bases) and rarely made dessert!! OK, bar the occasional tiramisu:). In fact all my cake baking was out of a box prior to my intolerance diagnosis last year! When my children and I went on restricted diets my cooking skills were put to the test. I actually learned to bake and invent sweet and savoury recipes with our limited allowable ingredients and soon found I really enjoyed the challenge.

Before, I was just cooking from recipes, now I’m engineering my own recipes. Engineering- some of you may scoff, but I do actually use my calculator in the kitchen to figure out quantities and ratios and my knowledge of concrete mixes and composite fibre construction has greatly influenced the “structural integrity” of my biscuits, crackers, bars and buns. How else could I figure it out egg, gluten and starch free and get it right first batch?

Whole food cooking has transformed my kitchen over the last year as we’ve gradually upgraded and expanded our equipment range. We’ve bought a pigeon pair fridge/freezer, Vitamix, Excalibur dehydrator, Schmitt crock, ice-cream maker, reverse osmosis water filter, 3 additional slow cookers, baking trays, silicon moulds, ice block moulds, noodle spiraliser, about 1000 glass dishes and jars and the best ingredients we can afford. It has been an expensive process but we both see it as a very important investment in our family’s health.

That’s more than enough about me. I hope you enjoy my website and hope you like my book when it’s ready too. I’ll be sharing a few more recipes here along the way before it’s published.

You are so inspiring! We are currently doing gaps intro, and I can’t imagine also developing a business and making even more food, I feel like that’s all I do at the moment and I barely keep up. I really look forward to buying your cookbook.
By the way, Marshelly is my elder daughters favourite new food, previously every sip of broth was a battle, now I can’t make enough!
Thanks for your awesome creativity 🙂

Thank you Elowyn. It means a lot to me to hear that all my work is paying off and that it’s helping your family. Really glad to help make a GAPS Intro mum’s life a little easier:)). Marshelly was such a hit in our house during intro, I just had to share, so glad she likes it. Take care and keep up the good work:)